History Expedition

History Expedition {Hex} is an idea to record the history and working conditions of children and child labour in Karnataka. This will be through a bicycle expedition of children to visually and empirically document the travails and tribulations of the children of India so as to raise the knowledge, awareness and information about the status of child labour in order to eliminate it.

Organize the Born free photo exhibition at your place to raise awareness about child labour! Contact us!

For the making of the History Expedition { HEX }, we trained our students, themselves former working children, in the art of digital photography. The goal was to give them a medium to document their own previously unrecorded history. In 2006, 15 children of the Bornfree were trained in the digital cameras and traveled by bicycles throughout the 27 districts of Karnataka. They recorded 25000 photographic images of bonded, working and street children and cycled a total of 4000km. These photos were combined with the film footage John Devaraj documented along the journey and were submitted to the Indian Parliament in 2007 as The History Expedition: primary evidence that the laws against child labor are doing little to protect the working children of India. This documentary is a powerful example of working children writing their own history while providing proof of the injustice and cruelty to which they are subject. The Bornfree kids submitted thousands of photographs to Shri Oscar Fernandez, the then Minister for Labour (See the photo the above).

HEX is an extension of the Of Legacies and Legends idea through out the length and breadth of the districts of India in order to study it and create an empirical visual data base. Of Legacies and Legends(OLAL) is a visual documentation of the life and times of working and street children. Thus OLAL has been organized in 15 places; With working and street children, bonded labour children, students and youth from Bangalore and Japan. Nepali street children also clicked pictures in Kathmandu. So far, OLAL has been able to create over 6000 pictures. OLAL exhibition are making their impact in the worlds children and youth gathering: From schools, colleges in India to the World Social forum in Mumbai, 2003 to the Morocco youth congress. Also, the exhibition took place in Germany, Spain, England, Japan and Singapore. The important exhibition came by its showing in the first global congress of child labourers in Florence {The World Congress on Child Labour by the Global March against Child Labour}held in May 2004. OLAL has caught world attention and is now being organized through out in Africa, Asia and Latin America. All documented pictures are browsed on the line; http://www.olal.net